Dec. 7, 2005. 04:06 AM
MICHELLE SHEPHARD
STAFF REPORTER
Abdullah Khadr, who Western intelligence services allege ran
an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s,
has been released from custody in Pakistan and returned to
Toronto, a free man.
The Toronto Star has learned the 24-year-old Canadian,
whose brother is the only Canadian held in the U.S. detention
centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was accompanied by
Canadian officials on a flight to Toronto's Pearson International
Airport last Friday.
THIS IS CANADIAN SECURITY
Khadr is the eldest of Ahmed Said Khadr's four sons.
The senior Khadr, an accused terrorist financier, was killed in
a 2003 shootout with Pakistani forces.
Abdullah Khadr was questioned at the airport by RCMP
investigators, then dropped off at his grandparents' home in
Scarborough and told he was a "free man," according to his
relatives and lawyer.
Court documents show that Khadr and his sister Zaynab are
under investigation by the RCMP for terrorism-related offences.
But Khadr has not been charged criminally in Canada.
Two days after he returned, RCMP investigators visited him
again and questioned him at a local doughnut shop.
The revelation of Khadr's return raises a series of questions
about who precisely was holding him in Pakistan and why he
was quietly released.
"How did he get flown into the country? Who was holding him?
Why has his family been told nothing?" Khadr's
Edmonton-based lawyer Dennis Edney asked yesterday.
U.S. officials told the Star yesterday they may seek to have
charges laid against Khadr, then have him extradited to the
U.S. to face trial.
"He is a Canadian citizen, so when he returns to Canada,
he is in the Canadians' hands," one source said.
"But the U.S. has an interest in this man."
SHOULDN'T WE WORRY?
The Washington sources said the U.S. would likely issue a
provisional request for arrest to the RCMP for unspecified
crimes. Washington and Ottawa have an extradition treaty
and the U.S. generally makes as many as 130 extradition
requests a year.
Ottawa makes a smaller number of requests from the U.S.
to have Americans returned to Canada to face trial.
Khadr's whereabouts have been the subject of much
speculation since he disappeared after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States. Intelligence officials believed
he was hiding in the mountainous region along Pakistan
and Afghanistan's border.
In February 2004, a report surfaced that he was the suicide
bomber who killed a Canadian solider stationed near Kabul.
Khadr came out of hiding briefly to end those rumours,
appearing in silhouette for a CBC Television interview.
Five months later he cut off contact with his family
— and a Pakistani newspaper reported a Canadian
terrorism suspect was in custody.
Edney said that the Canadian government has refused to
confirm Khadr's whereabouts since that report in
October 2004, citing privacy concerns.
But Khadr asked Canadian officials who visited him in
custody to inform his family about his capture,
Edney said yesterday.
"Why didn't they do that? Why is he now released without
any explanation?" he said.
Khadr's return and some of those questions are likely to
spark debate on the campaign trail and put security
issues on the election agenda.
In 1996, then prime minister Jean Chrétien intervened on
behalf of Khadr's father, who had been arrested in
Pakistan on suspicion of financing a bombing.
The senior Khadr was released weeks after Chrétien visited
Pakistan where he raised the case with then prime
minister Benazir Bhutto.
That was later seen as an embarrassment to the government
when it emerged that the father was an alleged Al Qaeda
financier.
Abdullah Khadr later said that when Chrétien met with his father,
he told him: "Once I was a son of a farmer.
And I became prime minister. Maybe one day you will become
one."
LOOKS LIKE THEY HAVE BECOME ROYALTY IN CANADA
In government circles there's even a term called the
"Khadr effect," which is meant to serve as a warning against
intervening in security cases, which could later prove
embarrassing.
In his interview with CBC last year, Abdullah Khadr described
growing up with Osama bin Laden, but denied any connections
with Al Qaeda or reports that he ran a terrorist training camp.
He admitted that as a teenager he attended the Khalden
camp in Afghanistan, which intelligence officials allege was
linked to Al Qaeda.
"Anyone who wants to get trained can get trained in
Afghanistan. If you want to fire a Kalashnikov it is like in
Canada going and learning hockey. Anybody can do it.
A 10-year-old boy can fire a Kalashnikov in Afghanistan.
So it's not a big deal."
WOW HOCKEY AND TERRORISM- THE SAME?
I ALWAYS THOUGHT HOCKEY WAS DANGEROUS.
The camp was destroyed after 9/11. But it was once used
to train Al Qaeda militants, according to testimony from
Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian dubbed the "millennium bomber"
for his failed attempt to blow up the Los Angeles airport in
December 1999.
When asked about 9/11 in the CBC interview, Khadr replied
that he felt sorry for those who were killed but admiration for
the hijackers. "It was very wild to see a person seeing a
building in front of him and he's going 900 kilometres per
hour straight in the building. That was very hard to believe.
If you believe in something very hard you can do that," he said.
"So you felt admiration for the people who did this?" the CBC
reporter asked him.
WOW TOO BAD CANADIANS WERE KILLED HUH?
"Yes. Because they did some things that stunned the entire
world," Khadr replied. "Everybody for entire, like months, was
only talking about that."
When contacted yesterday through relatives, Khadr declined
to be interviewed.
His return means all surviving Khadr family members but one
are now living in Scarborough, including the youngest son,
Karim, who was paralyzed in the 2003 battle where his father
died. Abdurahman Khadr, 22, was also in the news this week
asking a federal court for his passport after his application for
a renewal was refused.
The only member of the family not in Canada is Omar Khadr,
now 19. He has been detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
since his capture at the age of 15.
LOOKS LIKE HE WILL BE HERE SOON TOO?
He has been charged with murder for allegedly throwing a
grenade that killed an army medic in Afghanistan and is
scheduled to make his first appearance before a U.S. military
commission in Cuba on Jan. 10.
files from Tim Harper in Washington
LINK:
http://news.google.ca/nwshp?tab=wn&topic=n
MAY GOD BLESS AND PROTECT CANADA!
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